Fang, Chao;
Baz, Sarah Akhtar;
Sheard, Laura;
Carpentieri, JD;
(2023)
‘I am just a shadow of who I used to be’—Exploring existential loss of identity among people living with chronic conditions of Long COVID.
Sociology of Health & Illness
10.1111/1467-9566.13690.
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Abstract
Identity loss and (re)construction forms a central debate in sociology of chronic illness. Living with chronic/persistent health conditions may raise questions about how disruptions can touch upon and further threaten the very roots of existence, by which people reflexively perceive a coherent and stable sense of ‘being-in-the-world’. Whilst medical sociologists have shown interest in ‘existential loss’ in chronic illness, this question remains largely underexplored. Adopting a qualitative study on Long COVID (LC) as an example, this article illuminates existential identity loss as a deeply painful experience of losing body as a fundamental medium to retain continuity and consistency of one’s narratively constructed identity. Interviews with 80 LC sufferers in the UK revealed that living with persistent and often uncertain symptoms and disruptions can cause the loss of biographical resources and resilience, making it difficult to reflexively understand their own being within the world. Their dynamic responses to LC also highlighted how sufferers’ longing for a narratively coherent self can profoundly shape the ongoing construction of their identity in chronic health conditions. These insights into the complicated and often hard-to-express existential pain of identity loss can also nurture more holistic understandings of and support for LC and chronic illness more broadly.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | ‘I am just a shadow of who I used to be’—Exploring existential loss of identity among people living with chronic conditions of Long COVID |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1111/1467-9566.13690 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.13690 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2023 The Authors. Sociology of Health & Illness published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness. |
| Keywords: | chronic illness, existentialism, Long COVID, narrative identity, temporality |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Education, Practice and Society |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10173532 |
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